Best Straightway Poems

When through my window flew a tiny bird,
she straightway went to where she chose to roost.
I laughed because it seemed a bit absurd
her perching on my bed post! I deduced
she'd lost her way, but now that she was here,
she seemed at home. She cocked her...

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Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.

Unless your words heal me hastily,
my heart's wound will remain green;
for your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain.

By...

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I starts me life as pirate, 
A grommet before age twelve,
Not an ordinary bandit,
High sea adventures me delve.

With a Letter of Marque in me han’
And the Commodore for me pa!
I spends dogwatch near the helmsman,
Nerey missin’ me bonny ma.

Old salts tell their gory tales,
Aye, dogs...

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Alone I arrive, walking from Frederick
over the gaps, across gentle hills
out onto a knoll
overlooking this burnished landscape.
Before me I see countless writhing rows
of indiscernible shapes gathered
in terrible rituals mid fire and smoke
darkening the sun.
From distant corners I hear
the rhythmic thud of cannon,
and from fields astir...

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G irls giggle and tell secrets. That’s okay!
R ambunctious boys can cause my head to ache.
A ngelic girls are easier to take.
N ight comes. They kneel beside their bed to pray.
D ear little dolls, they go to sleep straightway,
D ress up like princesses when they...

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I watched, fascinated, as the tall lone boy
in line to ride the Scrambler
stuffed handfuls of peanuts in his mouth.
This was the same boy I had spied just an hour ago
further down the way
where thirteen seemingly ravenous, foolish people 
bent their heads to plates, and with...

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Quelle vicende vissi fino in fondo.
Quando mi riappropriai della mia vita
Se questo è un uomo chiesi a tutto il mondo.”
Those events I lived through and through.
When I again impropriated of my life
If this is a man I asked all the world. 
La sua voce non...

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One sunny, sweet sunflower day,
adventure called. . . I went straightway
across those flowered fields of home
and facing west, began to roam!

When everything behind me lay
that sunny, sweet sunflower day,
gold rays were filtering through trees,
and bluebirds glided on the breeze.

Then dropping seeds along my trail
of history,...

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I.

A hundred years of age—a birthday rarely reached; 
He never got to fifty, and fifty years are gone
And more. That afternoon the TV set was on—
I wasn’t even five years old—and while we watched

A Fractured Fairy Tale, they broke in with the news
And straightway, all...

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 dramatic verse 

LORD, your mission I long to fulfill.  
I know at times I hinder Your grace.     
BELIEVE, You plead. -- I believe until
HELP is put on hold and doubts displace
THOU, God, the one Master of my will
MY deepest...

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Once when we lived way up north where it's real cold in winter,
We had a dog named Leroy, it's him I now remember.
We took him from a real bad home where he was abused and beaten.
The man was going to shoot him for that man...

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The life without you
is like a tree without flowers, 
the moon without the stars,
a kiss without lips,
long wandering love,
the weary heart may faint for rest,
and a body without soul...

The life without you
is like a drifting foam of a restless sea
when the waves show their teeth
in...

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This poem is inspired by and I guess coud be in conjunction With Andrea Dietrich's wonderful 
little poem" Dog that Wears a Cone" so her's should be read first if you have not already!


We once had a Lab, black with white socks,
he was so very...

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***Waterfalls***


A river’s passage to rock-walled heights of mountain  clifts to no longer find a straightway ahead along more accepting ground but to be soon upset at the sudden edge’s denial of place where

The dynamic current’s bed  is sliced away causing the river’s chaos...

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In the famed halls of tainted justice,
on granite pedestals, 
stand carved images of corruption
Sculpted stone countenances, 
with etched somber appearances,
pillar levitate in Roman atriums
of grand pall splendor 
Wicked dead visages
placed disembodied erect
in the mausoleum corridors
Sullen sepulchre sentries
to the crypt chambers of the living 
governance sinful...

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